The Black Youth Project is a platform that highlights the voices and ideas of Black millennials. Through knowledge, voice, and action, we work to empower and uplift the lived experiences of young Black Americans today.

By: Chaya Crowder

For me, this presidential election season has been characterized by apathy. As a political scientist, I have been grappling with Paul Frymer’s notion of “electoral capture,” the idea that Black people as a whole essentially have no choice but to vote for the Democratic nominee. Perhaps Black Twitter best summed this up with the recent hashtags #GuessImWithHer and #GirlIGuessImWithHer. They are both hilarious and depressing.

By: Angelica Bastien

Sorry to disappoint you Storm fans, but the latest X-Men film has once again failed to make her the badass she deserves to be on screen. Storm is the most well-known and powerful black female superheroes, so why does she keep being sidelined?

By: Sam Fleming

Drake is one of the few legitimate pop stars to come out of hip-hop. Already joining the ranks of rappers such as Eminem and Kanye West, he has had the quickest rise to fame and critical acclaim in recent memory.

With this fame has come scrutiny and labels. He is often referred to as being fake and is thought of as soft by rap fans and insiders alike. Drake dropped the mixtape If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late in early 2015 to fight these labels. The mixtape caught people off guard. It was a stark departure from the sentimental style he established previously. Proclaiming he didn’t care about haters, Drake stressed that more was more to come on his upcoming album, Views. But, that just wasn’t the case.

By: Angelica Bastien

With Captain America: Civil War the clockwork-like efficiency of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe is on full display. Nearly a decade after it was kicked off with Iron Man (2008), Marvel has perfected its formula which mixes a blend of humor, light pathos, and bright-eyed optimism. The problem is the cracks in this methodology are beginning to show and these films desperately need to start coloring outside of the lines.

In Civil War, the strengths of the MCU brand—reliance on quips, increasingly smooth easily commodified storytelling, exceeding lightness—feel like weaknesses. As the superhero genre continues to balloon Marvel’s desire to tell the same types of stories with the same types of characters is proving to be increasingly rote.

By: Angelica Bastien

The recently released 2016 Tony Award nominations reflect the especially diverse season on Broadway. But for the first time in the history of the award, there is a great chance that all four musical acting categories will be won by people of color which brings up a lot of hope about how theatre is addressing the call from diversity from fans and critics alike.

Lamont Lilly is a writer, activist, and father whose work echoes the struggles for justice and ambitions of our generation. These four poems push us to think differently about blackness in the contemporary moment.

From the author:

“Each piece is a reflection of the people, places and experiences of struggle that have shaped who I am–The Movement, the Black Aesthetic, strong Black women, our continued pursuit of Black Liberation. I just hope the people can receive it.”

His forthcoming debut, Honor in the Ghetto was edited by Shahida Muhammad and will be out this fall.

By Lamont Lilly

On April 2, 1969, twenty-one members of the Harlem Chapter of the Black Panther Party were formally indicted and charged with 156 counts of “conspiracy” to blow up subway and police stations, five local department stores, six railroads, and the Bronx based New York Botanical Garden.

By the early morning hours of April 3, mass sweeps were conducted city wide by combat squads of armed police. Law enforcement agencies ranging from the CIA, FBI, U.S. Marshalls and NY state police worked simultaneously to coordinate assaults on panther homes and community based offices. After numerous raids, ten panther men and two panther women were formally arrested, processed and quickly jailed. To anyone who supported radical politics of the 1960’s, there was no doubt that the indictment of the Panther ‘New York 21’ was a political and racist frame-up to not only “disrupt, discredit and destroy,” but to utterly dismantle the Black Panther Party from the inside out.

By: Sam Fleming

Denzel Curry has been on the rise for the last few years, but his latest release, Imperial, has propelled him into underground stardom. Curry has been releasing a steady stream of hardcore and cloud-rap since 2011, however with Imperial he finally finds his true voice and puts together some of the darkest, most hard-hitting hip-hop of the year.

He comes out the gate strong. Listening to the trio of “ULT,” “Gook” and “Sick and Tired” it feels like you have been hit over the head with a metal bat. Everything he raps is hard and the way that he snarls over the beats is at times exhausting. He is involved in every second of the music, but the mood of the project shifts throughout.

About The Black Youth Project

The Black Youth Project examines the attitudes, resources and culture of the young black millennials.

We have three core areas of focus: knowledge, voice, and action. Knowledge is the research we perform on Black millennials ages 18-35. Voice is the high-quality news and opinions written by Black millennials on this platform. Action is the work done through our sister organization BYP100.